Canada’s distorted debate about housing risks costing the public far more than most of us realize. Nearly all attention is placed on the supposed lack of supply, which has enabled right-wing politicians and pundits to falsely blame the crisis on excessive “red tape,” foreign students, new Canadians, or some combination thereof. Polls over the summer […]
Canadian government and their corporate owners: … but we’re gonna spend the next five years trying.
How’s the Canadian government going to get around restrictive zoning? You’re blaming the wrong level of government. As long as that happens, all we’re going to get is half-assed programs and little results. Ferret Face can propose all sorts of things, knowing he’ll never have to deliver, “Courts struck down the program, sorry.”.
Housing continues to be the jurisdiction of the provinces. The article ignores the patriation of the constitution in 1982, which lead to the Feds withdrawing from a bunch of programs they formally funded.
It also ignores the fact that housing prices in the GTA (among other places) were stagnant through the 1990s, so there was little incentive to continue building projects that would only increase supply and add downward price pressure. Once Harris got in, any chance of social housing development went out the window.
We also have to recognize that average house sizes have doubled since the 1960s. We’re using more land and more material to build fewer houses. What the hell did people think was going to happen to house prices? The sub-1000sq.ft. “strawberry box” houses built in the thousands as post wartime housing can’t be built in large part due to lack of demand and restrictive covenants. The same for the three story walk ups.
but we’re gonna spend the next five years
tryingpretending to try